Week 6 - Katrina Shi

6. What types of funding are relevant for your startup (ie: governmental funding, funding from industries, research grants from universities, charities, venture capitalist funding, and grants from the National Science Foundation)? What information do you need for each funding type? What are the potential itemized costs for your startup budget?

The readings this week touched on the national image of China, and how despite the country’s attempts at rebranding it is continuously criticized for its efforts. Since its post-Mao reforms, China’s continuous modernization process has transformed the formerly isolated country into an important player on the international stage. However, the nation’s unbalanced political and economic development has prevented it from effectively rebranding its public image.  Furthermore, the drastic differences between how the foreign media portray China and how its national media portrays the nation itself has made it difficult for China to create a credible, favorable image of itself.

From China’s experience, we can derive the importance of not only the efforts but into national rebranding, but also other actions carried out by the nation’s government and its industries. Since out team is considering obtaining the funds necessary for our startup through governmental funding as well as funds from the tourist industry, and the startup’s goal is to further develop the image of Bhutan as an culturally wealthy and eco-friendly nation, it is important for us to consider how their actions might affect the way Bhutan is seen on a global scale, and how we can work it in our favor. Since our startup intends to act as a medium introducing Bhutan to the rest of the globe, the costs that are needed mainly consists of the costs to start the #HikestoHappiness online campaign. For the information that we would need to provide for the government and industries in which we hope to extract funds from, we will need a more solid outline on the methods we plan to use to accomplish our goal and how much it would approximately cost us. Some potentially itemized costs for our budget include: website developers, an advertisement team for multiple major social media platforms, and possibly web designers to aid with the campaign efforts.

Question: How can a country avoid negative media coverage when attempting to rebrand the nation?

Sources:
"Olympic Emblem." China.org.cn. China.org.cn. Web

Ding, Sheng. "Branding a Rising China: An Analysis of Beijing's National Image Management in the Age of China's Rise." Journal of Asian and African Studies 46.3 (2011): 293-305. Web. 9 Feb. 2017. 

Latham, Kevin. "Media, the Olympics and the Search for the "Real China"." The China Quarterly (2009): 25-42. Web. 9 Feb. 2017.